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TV Guide Magazine: How did State of Affairs lure you back into the spotlight?
Heigl: Executive producers Rodney Faraon and Hank Crumpton are ex-CIA. Rodney was on the briefing team for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. They’d tell stories, and I’d think about how no one really talks about those analysts. There’s no real glory in the job, because they have to remain anonymous. There’s not a lot of money in it. Plus, the idea of playing a grown-up woman in a powerful position seemed really appealing to me.
TV Guide Magazine: How is she different from Izzie?
Heigl: Izzie had a very serious grown-up career, but she was — and I was — young. She was still fumbling around life. So I was excited to play a true adult.
TV Guide Magazine: You’ve said returning to TV isn’t a step backward. Are you tired of constantly defending your career choices?
Heigl: I find it interesting that people even ask if TV is a demotion. How can you say that and watch something like Matthew McConaughey in True Detective or Kevin Spacey in House of Cards?
TV Guide Magazine: The first episode has gone through many versions since you shot it. Has the process been nerve-racking?
Heigl: The pilot morphed from one thing to another and then back again, because, honestly, what Joe Carnahan made was so phenomenal. But I find the whole process fascinating rather than nerve-racking.
TV Guide Magazine: Do you ever disagree with where the writers want to take Charlie?
Heigl: Oh, yeah. That always comes up. But I think it does for every actor. There are moments where you’re like, “That’s not who she is, or who we’re trying to make her.” The beauty of also being a producer is they do have to at least hear me out.
TV Guide Magazine: Were there any changes you did insist on?
Heigl: My mother and I felt strongly that Charlie needs to have an intriguing love interest who is not dead like her fiancé. We added someone to the pilot.
TV Guide Magazine: Given recent events, why did you decide not to cut the beheading storyline?
Heigl: [Because] that was actually when I realized, “My God, what we’re talking about isn’t far-fetched.” The story we’re telling is relevant.
TV Guide Magazine: Charlie has a very high-security job with big secrets to keep. Can she trust her colleagues?
Heigl: Right now, Joe and I are arguing because he always wants to have someone either die or be really horrible. I’m like, “No, no, the team has to be the team! The audience has to be able to count on them. No one should be the secret bad guy.” We’ll see who wins the argument. I’m not sure!

TV Guide Magazine: On Grey’s, you stood up for yourself and said, “Look, I don’t think this material is good.” If a male actor did that, it might not have been a big deal.
Heigl: Yeah, I know, we’d have to write a book if we were to talk about that. Look, there are gracious, classy ways of doing what I did. Then the not-so-gracious and not-so-classy ways. I fell into the latter at that point in my life. I spent the next couple of years wobbling. If people keep saying something about you, you wonder if they’re right and you’re wrong. It’s uncomfortable to think, “My God, am I really this s–tty person?” But it wasn’t the end of the world either. There’s a lot worse I could have done. I’m always going to fight for the material to be great.

NBC’s State of Affairs, which premiered Monday, finds Katherine Heigl scrubbing back into television as Charleston Tucker — a no-nonsense CIA analyst by day and a no-pants party girl by night.

We meet her during an apparently average therapy session, which she mostly spends reliving the death of her fiancé Aaron, a special forces soldier who was killed in Afghanistan. Additionally, her therapist insists she’s repressing what really went down the night he was killed, which is later corroborated by an informant — a very, very familiar-looking informant.
It’s soon revealed that Tucker’s fiancé was also the son of the President of the United States (Alfré Woodard), to whom Tucker reports on a daily basis. Because of their personal connection, the duo’s working relationship is understandably skewed; even during important morning meetings, it kind of feels like they’re just two almost-relatives hanging out. (Where’s the tea, right?)
Tucker’s also got a touch of Homeland‘s Carrie Mathison in her, which we see when she somehow manages to avoid CIA security and make her way into the White House after being suspended for withholding crucial information from the President. As it turns out, she’s pretty much untouchable.
The premiere ends with Tucker making a solemn promise to the President: “I am going to find every last person who had anything to do with the death of your son, and I’m going to end every single one of their lives.”

Actress Katherine Heigl returns to television Monday, Nov. 17 in NBC’s new CIA drama “State of Affairs.” She plays Charlie Tucker, a CIA foreign policy analyst whose job is to brief the President (Alfre Woodard) every morning on the day’s intelligence report.

The role is very different for Heigl, whose previous credits on the small screen include playing young ingenues in soapy TV movies such as “Wuthering Heights” (2003) and drama series’ “Roswell” (1999-2002) and “Grey’s Anatomy” (2005-2010). Heigl tells Zap2it the reason why playing Charlie made her want to return to TV for the first time since exiting her role of Izzie Stevens on “Grey’s” in 2010 has a lot to do with the character’s maturity.

“At 35, I just really wanted to play an adult,” Heigl says. “I’d been playing young, just trying to figure it out women for so long. Charlie is really unbelievably good at her job. She has a really strong and powerful position in the CIA and I thought, ‘Why wouldn’t I want to play that kind of chick?’ That’s so cool.”

After years of stepping into characters written by other people, Heigl seems happy to now be calling the shots. “Charlie herself was really intriguing to me. I got to have a real voice in creating her with all her flaws and her strengths. That was really compelling and exciting to get to be a part of, just developing this person,” she says.

“State” is a bit of a passion project for Heigl. The concept for the show is one she and her mother Nancy Heigl have been trying to get made for nearly two years. Heigl says things didn’t quite come together until the two collaborated with producer Joe Carnahan, who fleshed out a solid story where the characters could thrive.

Now the role allows Heigl to show a completely different side of her talents on screen. “She’s more of a bada** than I am. She’s no bulls***,” Heigl says. “She doesn’t put up with it and doesn’t dish it, but I do all the time. I dish a lot of bulls*** … just kidding. [ laughs] I’m much softer about it.”

All jokes aside, the actress reveals there are strong similarities between her and Charlie. “She’s also intensely loyal and that I think we have that in common,” Heigl explains. “She will also fight to the death for anybody she loves or cares about, as will I.”

Being prudent doesn’t come naturally to Katherine Heigl, as you might have heard. Even if, in her new role on NBC’s State of Affairs (Monday, 10 p.m. ET/PT), she plays a savvy behind-the-scenes government operative.

“It’s ironic that I am doing a CIA show and it’s about D.C. — I’m terrible at politics,” she says. “I don’t understand the politics of things.”

No kidding. She’s referring to that time, back in June 2008, she pulled herself from Emmy consideration while on Grey’s Anatomy, blasting the show’s writers for not giving her “the material this season to warrant” it.

She called her first major movie, the blockbuster Knocked Up, “a little sexist” in an interview with Vanity Fair. And then, after adopting her daughter in September 2009 with husband Josh Kelley, she didn’t return to work after her maternity leave. Her final Grey’s episode aired in January 2010, when Heigl pursued a full-time movie career that didn’t quite materialize, and endured an equally bumpy ride, publicity-wise.

“I upset people. I wish I had kept that private, between us, behind closed doors. But I’ve also said I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. I was a bit flippant and a bit casual in vomiting out what I thought and felt about things,” she says.

Heigl has had a reputation as being, well, challenging. It’s followed her from Grey’s , a reality that deeply frustrates her as she takes on her new role as a CIA agent who briefs the president (Alfre Woodard). She says her work ethic on the series, which she headlines, is beyond reproach, and that she takes every storyline seriously.

“I’ve gotten to know our two executive producers really well, and they are ex-CIA. I find them so fascinating. Why the hell would you want to do this? I wanted to dwell into that psyche a little bit, people who make that choice. There’s a lot of things you can do with that level of intelligence. Why dedicate that kind of time and energy to something with no glory, no money? The stakes are so high. These people deserve a ton of credit,” she says.

Heigl, too, is a force of nature. Spend time with her, and you quickly realize she’s candid, almost to a fault, and outspoken, but in a way that isn’t off-putting.. There’s no sense of nastiness hiding under a gauze of publicity-trained politeness.

“When I hear the word difficult, I know exactly what I imagine that behavior to be. Is my definition completely different or the same? If you hear that about me, what do you imagine my behavior must be?” she asks, in her direct manner.

Well, it means you’re chronically late to set, you don’t know your lines, you quite possibly have substance-abuse issues, and you refuse to leave your trailer.

Heigl nods.

“That’s what I would think, too. They must not be professional or respectful, storming off sets and slamming doors. That’s what I imagine it to be. When they equate that to me, I’ve never done that stuff in my entire career. My mother would kill me,” she says.

So why the reputation, which simply won’t fade into the ether, especially after Grey’s showrunner Shonda Rhimes told the Hollywood Reporter this fall that all is calm on her ABC hit Scandal, explaining “there are no Heigls” on the set.

“I think because it sells. I did and said a couple of things and it turned into a persona. For a couple of years I was really struggling, getting defensive and angry and wanting to have my say. Hold on! That’s not true! That never happened,” she says.

Then a friend, who also is in the industry, sat her down for dinner and tried to give her some perspective. “She said, ‘Katie, it’s just business. Don’t take it so personally.’ I’m a commodity. I’ve found a fairly reasonable way of managing it so it doesn’t make me feel so (expletive) about myself. But I don’t like it. If I died tomorrow, this is the legacy I leave behind and that frustrates me to no end. It isn’t true. It isn’t me,” she says.

Not even close, says Affairs producer Joe Carnahan, himself not one to toe the political line.

“She was very candid in the past. She has opinions. She owns them. Guys do it all the time. I can be obnoxious and a blowhard. I accept those parts of myself that are less than flattering. I found Katie to be a kindred spirit,” says Carnahan. “Katie is a very open person. She doesn’t come pre-packaged.”

Nor is she demanding or lazy. “She worked until 11 p.m. on Halloween and missed trick-or-treating with her kids. She’s an adaptive creature. She’s not problematic,” says Carnahan. “She’s not insufferable.”

For Heigl, who relies on a nicotine inhaler to curb her nerves, it’s a time of anxiety and stress, as she builds up to her show’s premiere. She misses her daughters Naleigh, almost 6, and Adalaide, 2, who are back home in Utah with their dad. She struggles with mommy guilt, with knowing she has missed school events because of her workload.

“It was a hard decision to make. There’s no right way to do this,” she says. “I can only do the best I can. For me that was controlling the schedule to some extent. I need to be able to say to my kids that ‘I know mommy hasn’t been able to drop you off at school but come January, I’ll be there every single day. I will be there. Just give me this time.'”